Smart field data devices in use today are generally Highway Addressable Remote Transducer (HART) enabled. HART is a global standard for sending and receiving digital information across analog wires between smart devices and control or monitoring systems. The HART communications protocol is widely recognized as the industry standard for digitally enhanced 4 milliampere (mA)-20 mA smart instrument communication. Use of the HART based technology is growing rapidly and today most major global instrumentation suppliers offer products that implement the HART communications protocol. The HART communications protocol enables two-way digital communication with smart instruments without disturbing 4 mA-20 mA analog signals. The HART communications protocol utilizes, for example, the Bell 202 frequency shift keying (FSK) standard of the Bell 202 modulator-demodulator (modem) of Bell System to superimpose digital communication signals at a low level over the 4 mA-20 mA analog signals. This process enables two-way field communication and makes it possible for additional information beyond the typical process variables to be communicated to and from a smart field instrument.
Current deployment of Highway Addressable Remote Transducer (HART) field data devices utilizes a hardware based Bell 202 modem and a separate microcontroller for a HART communications protocol implementation which adds to the total power. One or more HART field data device implementations, for example, a mixed signal microcontroller such as the MSP430 microcontroller of Texas Instruments, that utilize low power are known in the art. The MSP430 microcontroller utilizes many power saving techniques comprising multiple low power modes (LPMs), for example, LPM1 to LPM3. The current state of the art HART field data device implementations utilize these power saving methods. Although the MSP430 microcontroller can perform direct memory access (DMA) when a central processing unit (CPU) of the MSP430 microcontroller is not powered on or not activated, the HART field data devices that currently exist do not implement this technique. Moreover, the implementations known in the art utilize a poor approximation of the Bell 202 modem and are likely to result in poor performance characteristics in terms of bit error rate and low probability of receiving HART communications protocol messages correctly. Furthermore, combining precise digital signal processing (DSP) algorithms with DMA power saving methods are not implemented in the HART field data devices known in the art.
Highway Addressable Remote Transducer (HART) field data devices are commonly used in industrial automation and control systems. Many of these HART field data devices comprise a microcontroller, a HART modulator-demodulator (modem) compliant to the Bell 202 standard, and an interface arrangement compliant to a conventional 4 mA-20 mA current loop circuit. However, the total component count of the HART modem adds to the overall cost, lowers reliability of the HART modem, and results in higher power consumption. Hence, there is a need for a solution, for example, a soft modem device that eliminates additional components such as modem chips, resistors, capacitors, crystal oscillators, etc., and reduces cost and power. Since the HART communications protocol typically requires less than 1 megahertz (MHz) of central processing unit (CPU) cycles, the HART field data devices allow room for soft modem implementation. A soft modem is a modem with minimal hardware that utilizes a host's resources in place of additional hardware in a conventional modem. Since HART field data devices that utilize Bell 202 modem standards are power sensitive, there is a need for a soft modem implementation of the HART field data device that uses advanced techniques to minimize operating power.
In a typical Highway Addressable Remote Transducer (HART) field data device, modulation is performed via pulse width modulation (PWM). PWM is a modulation technique that controls the width of a pulse based on modulator signal information. Typically, PWM allows control of the power supplied to electrical devices. A conventional PWM modulator utilizes two different frequencies for PWM generation. This type of modulation works well at low baud rates, for example, at 300 bauds in a V.21 or Bell 103 modem, but results in substantial jitter and a lack of phase coherency at higher speeds. Hence, there is a need for a digital modulator with an exact numerical implementation, that outputs 1 or 0 instead of an 8 bit value, that operates at high baud rates, for example, 19200 or 9600 samples per second, and that results in low jitter and a good signal to noise ratio. Further, there is a need for lowering power consumption of the HART field data device by incorporating energy detect schemes to reduce the central processing unit (CPU) speed when no HART analog signal is present, using direct memory access which can work without CPU intervention, thereby lowering CPU power consumption, and changing the CPU clock dynamically as the processing demand of the HART field data device increases. Common energy detection methods for detecting a valid signal to enable power savings in a soft modem utilize an averaging and threshold detection method. These energy detection methods, typically, have a longer time constant and are slow to respond. Hence, there is a need for a quick energy detection method with a slower detection of energy decay.
Typically, multiple Highway Addressable Remote Transducer (HART) modems are required on an input/output (I/O) concentrator side of a control system, where an I/O controller communicates with multiple HART sensor devices, for example, HART sensor nodes. The I/O controller collects and consolidates data from each of the HART sensor devices for further processing, for example, digitization, modulation, etc., upstream in a communication channel. Conventionally, multiple chips, that is, multiple electronic circuits, each performing functions of a single modem, are used in the HART devices. However, this results in an increase in cost and power consumption. Therefore, there is a need for a HART device that consolidates multiple modems into one integrated circuit for optimizing cost and power consumption and increasing reliability of operation of the HART device by optimizing, that is, reducing the number of components used in the HART device.
Hence, there is a long felt but unresolved need for a soft modem implementation of a Highway Addressable Remote Transducer (HART) field data device that requires a low operating power. Moreover, there is a need for a method that performs quick energy detection of digitized analog samples and throttling of the central processing unit (CPU) clock of the HART soft modem device based on the energy detection of the digitized analog samples, for reducing power consumption of the HART soft modem device. Furthermore, there is a need for a HART device implementation that replaces multiple modems with a single integrated circuit for efficient modulation and demodulation of HART messages.